Shed No Tears—it’s better this way.

In 2013, JJNAY’s coming-of-age album was released: TRANS4M. It bore his first music video, First of a Kind. Thomas Michael—JJ’s 3-year-elder cousin—reached out after seeing the video and hearing the album. That phone call would catalyze a close 8-year relationship, and subsequently, that relationship’s sour end. From the remnants of that sour end, an EP emerges.

JJ and Thomas (not the Jet Plane and Tank Engine) spent a fair amount of time together in childhood—birthday parties, family gatherings, sleepovers, and playdates filled with action figures. The two weren’t much connected in teenhood, but that pivotal phone call in 2013 brought them back together like never before.

The newfound relationship began with music. With no official releases of his own, Thomas sought JJ’s aid in crafting a collection of songs that resulted in No Need To Explain—Thomas’s debut EP. The two spent many weekends in JJ’s home-studio working on the project, with JJ producing each song and contributing two verses of his own.

As Thomas began performing and planning a follow-up project, his reliance on JJ intensified. It was a one-sided affair too much for anyone offering free labor, let alone for another artist with aspirations of their own. JJ vented his frustrations, Thomas sympathized, and music took a backseat in their relationship moving forward.

But ironically, or perhaps unironically, their relationship only deepened thereafter. Though Thomas relocated out of state and music was now a sidebar, he and JJ grew to call each other brother. Weekly phone calls lasting hours and occasional weekend stays at each other’s homes became the norm.

JJ released 6 singles in the later part of 2017, but eventually dialed back on making music after a few performances and a college radio campaign.

———————

In 2021, Thomas and JJ reignited each other’s musical flames and began collaborating once again. This time, it was for a joint venture: Realignment. They spent more time than ever in JJ’s lab working on tracks for their shared EP, though only 2 singles would end up seeing the light of day—What You Need and No Doubt released a month apart in 2022.

With shared plans for music videos and additional collab songs on the docket, Thomas once again sought JJ’s aid in his own personal projects. But this time, the outcome would not be the same.

JJ’s hand was forced to re-express his lack of interest—or fairness—in helming another artist’s project, even if that artist happened to be one called brother. Thomas took ill to those frustrations this time around, confused as to the dynamic of their collaborative process. The truth was that JJ—even in their joint ventures—contributed far more to the pot. As heard on Ghosted:

“Thought we was a team”
Okay, no doubt, what you need?
I make the beat and write the hook and mix the track
And even help you with your raps homie, what’s in it for me?

Yet it wasn’t just music that caused a rift. As time progressed, it became clear that the two were not in alignment. As heard on Take a Look:

Too much insecurity foggin that brain
The discipline missin, ya destined pain

And again on Ghosted:

Feel like Drizzy man, you drain me of my energy
Always tryna be somebody that you’ll never be
Overstay ya welcome, get to steppin like a centipede

I was always taught that gratitude is vital
You were spoiled rotten, so you feel entitled
I show consistency in all that I’m involved in
Your life is never stable cause you’re too impulsive

Leading up to the release of their 2 collaborative singles, tensions brewed and conversations were had. Then, what began with a phone call concluded with a phone call in November 2022—a final conversation had between them. They say all good things must come to an end, perhaps even brotherly bonds.

People change. Relationships fade. That’s life.

But for an artist? That’s fuel.

———————

JJNAY’s love for making music rose again (as it always had) in the later part of 2024. With buckets of unreleased material at various stages of completion, he pondered what pieces deserved priority. The first was a track originally meant to serve as the third and final song on the unmanifested Realignment EP. This Man for the Job was actually complete, but the two artists were never fully satisfied with the hook they’d made. After their falling out, it simply fell to the wayside. But JJ saw its potential and revived it by creating his own hook and replacing Thomas’s verse. You might call this the first bullet loaded into the chamber.

Reinvigorated, JJ focused next on Take a Look. Though Thomas never got around to penning a verse for the song, it had been another on the list for future collaborative releases. With a hook and first verse completed long before, JJ found inspiration in penning a second set of bars containing jabs at his estranged cousin. Consider this the second bullet—and a much heavier one:

Look at him strugglin
Runnin to momma for money, it’s troublin
Searchin for women, anxiety doublin
Hopin to pop but you ain’t even bubblin

In the few months leading up to the relationship ending, Thomas quit his day job to pursue a singing career. Not rapping, singing—amateur pop songs propped up only by the naivety of dream-seeking.

Still, Shed No Tears had yet to form—even with the diss bars in Take a Look—until fate conspired to provide the creative spark needed for its inception. A casual phone call with a family member revealed new details: two years later, Thomas was indeed still hammering away at pop songs with his mom footing the bills. More specifically:

Five racks every month for the baby boy
Lotta change for a chump when he ain’t employed

With previous assumptions further validated, a long-time cringe at his cousin’s post-rap music ventures, and greater clarity on their falling out, the creative stars had aligned for JJ’s musical resurgence. It was time for an EP, capped off by a far more deliberate diss track (Ghosted) and cover art directly mirroring that of those 2 collaborative singles from the Realignment era.

Consider this bullets 3 through 99.

———————

One might think that choosing a target and firing out of the blue implies a sense of resentment and rumination, but JJ assures otherwise…

On Take a Look:

Life real good, I’m doin my thing
Got a lil cash up in my bank
Got a lil gas up in my tank

Circle real tight
It keep me straight
Pretty lil wife, she treat me great
Sleepin through the night
Yea I get about eight

On Really Can’t Deny:

All I’m tryna do is empty out these bullets from my bucket list
Find some inspiration, then I shape it like a publicist
Universe provides the information, I just channel it
Only speak the truth, it’s not my fault if you can’t handle it

It would appear “the beef” is merely a source of creative energy and the target merely a muse. But that’s not to say there isn’t truth behind the attacks.

On Ghosted:

We was playin Double Dash
Now he really bout to crash
All that singin really trash

Mario Kart puns and mocking one’s art might be more of a slap than a shot, but JJ’s exposé of his former brother-from-another-mother intensifies.

Further outlining the differences between them, JJ contrasts his stable marriage with Thomas’s irresponsible sexual looseness:

I’m in a castle with a queen livin well-respected
You in a alley with a stranger rollin unprotected
Crazy baby mama drama got you up and down
Choice in women really somethin, yea you must be proud

JJ pokes further, while alluding to the first of Thomas’s singles, Not Around:

Think about ya then and now since I’m “not around”
Wonder how you workin all ya little problems out

He digs up a criminal record:

Hit the road and came to help the day you got arrested, yea
I bring them bars right back to ya

He hints at medication, presumably in relation to mental health:

Where them pills at ah?
He gon need another dose

He gets deeply personal:

Just a bum like ya daddy huh?

And the name-calling character assessment for the killshot:

What’s a parasite without a host?

That bar specifically appears twice in the EP’s closer, followed by an echoed “you” mimicking one of Thomas’s No Need To Explain tracks. The piano and bassline of that 2015 track, Work of Art, are also directly sampled towards the end of Ghosted—a clear twist of the knife on JJ’s behalf.

Similar sampling occurs elsewhere on Ghosted—stock vocal samples from Rap Beat and Where’s the Competition, both sounds Thomas would instantly recognize from tracks on his 2015 EP. More deliberately, JJ interpolates the hook of Rap Beat as an intro by changing it to:

It’s a rap beef

Of course, JJ did produce those songs and had his own verses on them, so is it really that bad? Probably still, yes.

As if that weren’t enough, also laced throughout Ghosted are samples from Thomas’s own father (JJ’s uncle). From the multiple “BOOM”s punctuating certain diss bars to the taunting jabs of “Keep bringing it”, “You can bow out now”, and a haunting “That’s how quick I heal people”—the long-standing estrangement of Thomas and his dad make the hypeman-esque vocals a ghostly echo of their own.

And then there’s the coup de grâce: a recording of Thomas’s own child:

You won’t call me

A kick in the chest. The kind of moment that blurs the line between art and cruelty. A boast, a wound, and a truth all in one.

———————

Shed No Tears is fiercely poetic in more ways than one.

The flames it spawned began with the removal of What You Need and No Doubt from all streaming platforms exactly 3 years from What You Need’s release. The tracks were then reuploaded as Realignment—the pair’s original EP title. Most notably, JJ assumed rightful ownership over the reuploads, with a calculated “(feat. Thomas Michael)” replacing the previous artist credit of “JJNAY & Thomas Michael”.

Shed No Tears then dropped on the 3 year anniversary of No Doubt’s release. Its cover shows a somber-looking 3-4 year old JJ sitting alone on a tiny couch, hand over chest, beside an empty wooden chair with a heart carved in it. Compare that to the Realignment cover with a 2-3 year old JJ sitting on the floor beside a 5-6 year old Thomas with his arm wrapped around him.

Beyond release dates and rhyming artwork, the poetic symmetry offers even more with the first 8 bars of the EP’s final verse recycling lines from First of a Kind—the very bars that reconnected the two cousins years ago, now weaponized for battle:

We are not the same, it goes way beyond the lingo
Callin out a square, feelin like I’m playin bingo
You should bow down, put ya mouth up where my ring go
I’m a leg up even when I’m sleepin like flamingo

Yet perhaps calling it a battle is inaccurate. The disses are ghosts in themselves—echoes of a relationship that’s been dead for years. Perhaps it’s better viewed as a post-mortem: a lifelong artist exorcising a little history through rhyme. And maybe it’s a little trolling, too—because why not?

Aware of his near non-existent fan base, JJ nonetheless revels in the potency of his evil masterpiece:

Really I ain’t buzzin, but I know this finna sting yo

Some might wonder how a man so seemingly at peace could produce something so venomous, but JJ reassures on Really Can’t Deny:

Parents named me Jason, I was Bourne for this
But I do not forget, don’t get it twisted like contortionists
It really seems unnecessary, I said “well of course it is”
Just came natural to me though, it ain’t no forcin it

Petty? Cold? Gratuitous?

For sure.

But shed no tears.

JJ certainly isn’t.